Pirate Parties Continue To Grow In Europe As People Get Sick Of Politics As Usual

from the good-for-them dept

I've expressed my skepticism in the past about the ability of The Pirate Party to make a real dent long-term in politics, but I'm beginning to wonder if I've underestimated the effort. While we've seen some successes in Germany, it appears that the party has now become the third most popular party in the country, surpassing the Greens. That's fairly surprising. Equally interesting is that in nearby Austria, a Pirate Party member won a seat in a local city election... which actually made front page news:

These are still small steps, of course, and I still doubt that the party will become a "major" political party -- but its success in Europe is already driving other parties to pay much more attention to the issues that have attracted so much attention for The Pirate Party: internet freedom, free speech, civil liberties, copyright law, patent law, privacy and much more. If the Party's one major accomplishment is to bring those issues into the mainstream of politics, I'd consider it a pretty big success.